| 1850 |
- U.S. slave population in the 1850 United States Census: 3,204,313.
- March 11: U.S. Senator William H. Seward of New York delivers his "Higher Law" address. He states that a compromise on slavery is wrong because under a higher law than the Constitution, the law of God, all men are free and equal.
- April 17: U.S. Senator Henry S. Foote of Mississippi pulls a pistol on an anti-slavery Senator on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
- President Taylor dies on July 9 and is succeeded by Vice President Millard Fillmore. Although he is a New Yorker, Fillmore is more inclined to compromise with or even support Southern interests.
- Henry Clay proposes the Compromise of 1850 to handle California's petition for admission to the union as a free state and Texas's demand for land in New Mexico. Clay proposes (1) admission of California, (2) prohibition of Texas expansion into New Mexico, (3) compensation of $10 million to Texas to finance its public debt, (4) permission to citizens of New Mexico and Utah to vote on whether slavery would be allowed in their territories (popular sovereignty), (5) a ban of the slave trade in the District of Columbia; slavery would still be allowed in the district and (6) a stronger fugitive slave law with more vigorous enforcement. Under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a slave owner could reclaim a runaway slave by establishing ownership before a commissioner rather than in a jury trial. The commissioner would receive $10 if he held for the slave owner but only $5 if he did not. The commissioner could deputize and compel local citizens to become slave catchers. Clay's initial omnibus bill that included all these provisions failed. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois then established different coalitions that passed each provision separately. Southerners cease movement toward disunion but are angered by Northern resistance to enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. Northerners are upset about possible expansion of slavery in the Southwest and the stronger fugitive slave law that could require all U.S. citizens to assist in returning fugitive slaves. As events happen, California sends mostly pro-slavery Representatives and Senators to Congress until the outbreak of the Civil War.
- The Nashville Convention of nine Southern states discusses states' rights and slavery in June; in November, the convention talks about secession but adjourns due to the passage of the laws that constitute the Compromise of 1850.
- Utah is organized as a territory and adopts a slave code. Only 29 slaves are found in the territory in 1860.
- In October, a Boston "vigilance committee" frees two fugitive slaves, Ellen and William Craft, from jail and being returned to Georgia.
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| 1851 |
- Southern Unionists in several states defeat secession measures. Mississippi's convention denies the existence of the right to secession.
- In February, a crowd of black men in Boston frees fugitive slave Shadrach Minkins, also known as Fred Wilkins, who was being held in the federal courthouse, and help him escape to Canada.
- In April, the government guards fugitive slave Thomas Sims with 300 soldiers to prevent local sympathizers from helping him with an escape attempt.
- Narciso Lopez is killed in another effort to invade Cuba and spark an uprising which was supposed to lead to U.S. annexation of the island.
- In September 1851, free blacks confront a slave owner, his son and their allies who are trying to capture two fugitive slaves at Christiana, Pennsylvania. In the gunfight that followed, three blacks and the slave owner are killed while his son is seriously wounded.
- In October 1851, black and white abolitionists free fugitive slave Jerry McHenry from the Syracuse, New York jail and allow his escape to Canada.
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| 1852 |
- In Lemmon v. New York, a New York court frees eight slaves in transit from Virginia with their owner.
- After magazine publication, Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is published in book form. The powerful novel depicts slave owner "Simon Legree" as deeply evil, and the slave "Uncle Tom" as the Christ-like hero; sells between 500,000 and 1,000,000 copies in U.S. and even more in Great Britain. Millions of people see the stage adaptation. By June 1852, Southerners move to suppress the book's publication in the South.
- April 30: A convention called by the legislature in South Carolina adopts "An Ordinance to Declare the Right of this State to Secede from the Federal Union."
- The Whig party and its candidate for President, Winfield Scott of Virginia, general-in-chief of the U.S. Army, are decisively defeated in the election and the party quickly fades away. Pro-South ("doughface") Democrat Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire is elected President.
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| 1853 |
- Democrats control state governments in all the states which will form the Confederate States.
- The United States adds a 29,670-square-mile (76,800 km2) region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico to the United States through the Gadsden Purchase of territory from Mexico. James Gadsden, the American ambassador to Mexico, signs the treaty on December 30, 1853. The U.S. Senate ratifies the treaty with some changes on April 25, 1854 and President Franklin Pierce signs it. Mexico gives its approval to the final version on June 8, 1854. The purposes of the Gadsden Purchase are the construction of a transcontinental railroad along a deep southern route and the reconciliation of outstanding border issues following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican–American War. Many early settlers in the region are pro-slavery.
- Filibusterer William Walker and a few dozen men briefly take over Baja California in an effort to expand slave territory. When they are forced to retreat to California and put on trial for violating neutrality laws, they are acquitted by a jury that deliberated for only eight minutes.
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| 1854 |
- Democratic U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois proposes the Kansas-Nebraska Bill to open good midwestern farmland to settlement and to encourage building of a transcontinental railroad with a terminus at Chicago. Whether slavery would be permitted in a territory would be determined by a vote of the people at the time a territory is organized.
- Congress enacts the Kansas-Nebraska Act, providing that popular sovereignty, a vote of the people when a territory is organized, will decide "all questions pertaining to slavery" in the Kansas-Nebraska territories. This abrogates the Missouri Compromise prohibition of slavery north of the 36°30' line of latitude and increases Northerners' fears of a Slave Power encroaching on the North. Both Northerners and Southerners rush to the Kansas and Nebraska territories to express their opinion in the voting. Especially in Kansas, many voters are pro-slavery Missouri residents who enter Kansas simply to vote.
- Opponents of slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska Act meet in Ripon, Wisconsin in February, and subsequently meet in other Northern states, to form the Republican Party. The party includes many former members of the Whig and Free Soil parties and some northern Democrats. Republicans win most of the Northern state seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in the fall 1854 elections as 66 of 91 Northern state Democrats are defeated. Abraham Lincoln emerges as a Republican leader in the West (Illinois).
- Eli Thayer forms the New England Emigrant Aid Society to encourage settlement of Kansas by persons opposed to slavery.
- Bitter fighting breaks out in Kansas Territory as pro-slavery men win a majority of seats in the legislature, expel anti-slavery legislators and adopt the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution for the proposed state of Kansas.
- The Ostend Manifesto, a dispatch sent from France by the U.S. ministers to Britain, France and Spain after a meeting in Ostend, Belgium, describes the rationale for the United States to purchase Cuba (a territory which had slavery) from Spain and implies the U.S. should declare war if Spain refuses to sell the island. Four months after the dispatch is drafted, it is published in full at the request of the U.S. House of Representatives. Northern states view the document as a Southern attempt to extend slavery. European nations consider it as a threat to Spain and to Imperial power. The U.S. government never acts upon the recommendations in the Ostend Manifesto.
- Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave from Virginia, is arrested by federal agents in Boston. Radical abolitionists attack the court house and kill a deputy marshal in an unsuccessful attempt to free Burns.
- The Knights of the Golden Circle, a fraternal organization that wants to expand slavery to Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean Islands, including Cuba, and northern South America, is founded in Louisville, Kentucky.
- Former Mississippi Governor John A. Quitman begins to raise money and volunteers to invade Cuba, but is slow to act and cancels the invasion plan in spring 1855 when President Pierce says he would enforce the neutrality laws.
- The Know-Nothing Party or American Party, which includes many nativist former Whigs, sweeps state and local elections in parts of some Northern states. The party demands ethnic purification, opposes Catholics (because of the presumed power of the Pope over them), and opposes corruption in local politics. The party soon fades away.
- George Fitzhugh's pro-slavery Sociology for the South is published.
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| 1855 |
- Violence by pro-slavery looters from Missouri known as Border Ruffians and anti-slavery groups known as Jayhawkers breaks out in "Bleeding Kansas" as pro-slavery and anti-slavery supporters try to organize the territory as slave or free. Many Ruffians vote illegally in Kansas. Estimates will show that the violence in Kansas resulted in about 200 persons killed and $2 million worth of property destroyed during the middle and late 1850s. Over 95 per cent of the pro-slavery votes in the election of a Kansas territorial legislature in 1855 were later determined to be fraudulent.
- Anti-slavery Kansans draft an anti-slavery constitution, the Topeka Constitution, and elect a new legislature, which actually represent the majority of legal voters. Meanwhile, the initial fraudulently elected but legal Kansas legislature still exists.
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| 1856 |
- May 21: Missouri Ruffians and local pro-slavery men sack and burn the anti-slavery town of Lawrence, Kansas.
- John Brown, an abolitionist born in Connecticut, and his sons kill five pro-slavery men from Pottawatomie Creek in retaliation for the Lawrence massacre.
- May 22: Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beats with a cane and incapacitates Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the floor of the U.S. Senate. In a speech in the Senate chamber, The Crime Against Kansas, Sumner ridicules slaveowners—especially Brooks's cousin, U.S. Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina—as in love with a prostitute (slavery) and raping the virgin Kansas. Brooks is a hero in the South, Sumner a martyr in the North
- In the 1856 U.S. presidential election Republican John C. Frémont crusades against slavery. The Republican slogan is "Free speech, free press, free soil, free men, Frémont and victory!" Democrats counter that Fremont's election could lead to civil war. The Democratic Party candidate, James Buchanan, who carries five northern and western states and all the southern states except Maryland, wins. Third–party candidate, former President Millard Fillmore, won in Maryland.
- Thomas Prentice Kettell, a New York Democrat, writes Southern Wealth and Northern Profits, a lengthy statistical pamphlet about the economies of the Northern and Southern regions of the country. The book receives wide acclaim among secessionists in the South and much derision from anti-slavery politicians in the North, even though some historians think Kettell intended it as an argument that the two regions are economically dependent upon each other.
- Filibusterer William Walker in alliance with local rebels overthrows the government of Nicaragua and proclaims himself president. He decrees the reintroduction of slavery. Many of Walker's men succumb to cholera and he and his remaining men have to be rescued by the U.S. Navy in May 1857.
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| 1857 |
- George Fitzhugh publishes Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters, which defends chattel slavery and ridicules free labor as wage slavery.
- Commercial conventions in the South call for the reopening of the African slave trade, thinking that a ready access to inexpensive slaves would spread slavery to the territories.
- Hinton Rowan Helper, a North Carolinian, publishes The Impending Crisis of the South, which argues that slavery was the main cause of the South's economic stagnation. This charge angers many Southerners.
- The U.S. Supreme Court reaches the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, a 6 to 3 ruling that Congress lacks the power to exclude slavery from the territories, that slaves are property and have no rights as citizens and that slaves are not made free by living in free territory. Each justice wrote an opinion. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland, a former slave owner, concludes that the Missouri Compromise is unconstitutional. If a court majority clearly agreed (which it did not in this decision), this conclusion would allow all territories to be open to slavery. Dred Scott and his family were purchased and freed by a supporter's children. Dred Scott died of tuberculosis on September 17, 1858. Northerners vowed to oppose the decision as in violation of a "higher law." Antagonism between the sections of the country increases.
- Anti-slavery supporters in Kansas ignore a June election to a constitutional convention because less populous pro-slavery counties were given a majority of delegates. The convention adopts the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution. Meanwhile, anti-slavery representatives win control of the state legislature.
- In August, a short economic depression, the Panic of 1857, arises, mainly in large northern cities, as a result of speculation in and inflated values of railroad stocks and real estate. Southerners tout the small effect in their section as support for their economic and labor system.
- Buchanan endorses the Lecompton constitution and breaks with Douglas, who regards the document as a mockery of popular sovereignty because its referendum provision does not offer a true free state option. A bitter feud begins inside the Democratic party. Douglas's opposition to the Lecompton constitution erodes his support from pro-slavery factions.
- The Tariff of 1857, authored primarily by R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia, uses the Walker Tariff as a base and lowers rates.
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| 1858 |
- February: A fistfight among thirty Congressmen divided along sectional lines takes place on the floor of Congress during an all-night debate on the Lecompton constitution.
- The U.S. House of Representatives rejects the pro-slavery Lecompton constitution for Kansas on April 1.
- Congress passes the English Bill, proposed by Representative William Hayden English of Indiana, which sends the Lecompton constitution back to the voters of Kansas.
- On August 2, Kansas voters reject the Lecompton constitution.
- The New School Presbyterians split as the New Schoolers in the South who supported slavery split and formed the United Synod of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. In 1861 the Old School church split along North-South lines.
- Lincoln gives his "House Divided" speech on June 16, 1858.
- The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 focus on issues and arguments that will dominate the Presidential election campaign of 1860. Pro-Douglas candidates win a small majority in the Illinois legislature in the general election and choose Douglas as U.S. Senator from Illinois for another term. However, Lincoln emerges as a nationally known moderate spokesman for Republicans and a moderate opponent of slavery.
- In a debate with Lincoln at Freeport, Illinois, Douglas expresses an opinion which becomes known as the "Freeport Doctrine." Lincoln asks whether the people of a territory could lawfully exclude slavery before the territory became a state. In effect, this question asks Douglas to reconcile popular sovereignty with the Dred Scott decision. Douglas says they could do so by refusing to pass the type of police regulations needed to sustain slavery. This answer further alienates pro-slavery advocates from Douglas, contrary to Lincoln's apparent intention to show him as a supporter of slavery.
- In a speech in the U.S. Senate, Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina exclaims, "No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is King; until lately the Bank of England was king; but she tried to put her screws, as usual...on the cotton crop, and was utterly vanquished", which seemingly means that even Europe was dependent on the cotton economy of the Southern states and would have to intervene in any U.S. conflict, even an internal threat, to protect its source of vital raw material, King Cotton.
- William Lowndes Yancey and Edmund Ruffin found the League of United Southerners. They advocate reopening the African slave trade and formation of a Southern confederacy.
- U.S. Senator William H. Seward says there is an "irrepressible conflict" between slavery and freedom.
- Although solid evidence of their guilt is presented, the crew of the illegal slave ship, The Wanderer are acquitted of engaging in the African slave trade by a Savannah, Georgia jury. Similarly, a Charleston, South Carolina jury acquits the crew of The Echo, another illegal slave ship which is caught with 320 Africans on board.
- The free state of Minnesota is admitted to the Union.
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| 1859 |
- Southerners block an increase in the low tariff rates of 1857.
- In February, U.S. Senator Albert G. Brown of Mississippi says that if a territory requires a slave code in line with Douglas's Freeport Doctrine, the federal government must pass a slave code to protect slavery in the territories. If it does not, Brown says he will urge Mississippi to secede from the union.
- Oregon admitted as a free state.
- In Ableman v. Booth, the US Supreme Court ruled that the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law was Constitutional and that state courts cannot overrule federal court decisions.
- President Buchanan and Southern members of Congress, including Senator John Slidell of Louisiana, make another attempt to buy Cuba from Spain. Douglas supports the proposed annexation of Cuba. Republicans block funding.
- Southern senators block a homestead act that would have given 160 acres of land in the West to settlers.
- The Southern Commercial Convention endorses reopening the African slave trade to reduce the price of slaves and widen slaveholding. Many members think this would lessen feelings that the slave trade was immoral and provide an incentive or tool for Southern nationalism.
- On October 4, Kansas voters adopt the anti-slavery Wyandotte Constitution by a 2 to 1 margin.
- On October 16, Kansas abolitionist John Brown attempts to spark a slave rebellion in Virginia through seizure of weapons from the federal armory at Harpers Ferry. Brown holds the arsenal for 36 hours. No slaves join him and no rebellion ensues but seventeen persons, including 10 of Brown's men, are killed. Brown and his remaining men are captured by U.S. Marines led by detached Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee. Brown is tried for treason to the state of Virginia, found guilty and hanged on December 2 in Charles Town, Virginia (now Charlestown, West Virginia). Brown becomes a martyr to the North, but alarms the South as an example of a fanatical Yankee abolitionist trying to start a bloody race war. Secession sentiment grows in the South in response to Northern sympathy for Brown.
- New Mexico territory adopts a slave code, but no slaves are in the territory according to the 1860 census.
- Members of Congress which convenes in December insult, level charges at, threaten and denounce each other. Members come to the sessions armed. The House of Representatives requires eight weeks to choose a Speaker. This delays consideration of vitally important business.
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| 1860 |
- U.S. slave population in the 1860 United States Census: 3,954,174.
- The United States Census of 1860 concludes the U.S. population is 31,443,321, which is an increase of 35.4 percent over the 23,191,875 persons enumerated during the 1850 Census.
- The 1860 Census shows 26 percent of all Northerners but only 10 percent of Southerners live in towns or cities. The census also shows that 80 per cent of the Southern workforce but only 40 per cent of the Northern work force works in agriculture.
- Southern opposition kills the Pacific Railway Bill of 1860. President Buchanan vetoes a homestead act.
- February 27: Lincoln gives his Cooper Institute speech against the spread of slavery.
- Also in February, U.S. Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi presents a resolution stating the Southern position on slavery, including adoption of a Federal slave code for the territories.
- Knights of the Golden Circle reach maximum popularity and plan to invade Mexico to expand slave territory.
- April 23–May 3: The Democratic Party convention begins in Charleston, South Carolina. Southern radicals, or "fire-eaters", oppose front runner Stephen A. Douglas's bid for the party's Presidential nomination. The Democrats begin splitting North and South as many Southern delegates walk out. Douglas can not secure the two-thirds of the vote needed for the nomination. After 57 ballots, the convention adjourns to meet in Baltimore 6 weeks later.
- May 9: Former Whigs from the border states form the Constitutional Union Party and nominate former U.S. Senator John C. Bell of Tennessee for President and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for Vice-President on a one-issue platform of national unity.
- William H. Seward of New York, Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, and Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania are leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, along with more moderate Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, when the Republican convention convenes in Chicago on May 16. Lincoln supporters from Illinois skillfully gain commitments for Lincoln. On May 18, Lincoln wins the Republican Party nomination for President. The Republicans adopt a concrete, precise and moderately worded platform which includes the exclusion of slavery from the territories but the affirmation of the right of states to order and control their own "domestic institutions."
- June 18: The main group of Democrats meeting in Baltimore, bolstered by some new Douglas Democrat delegates from Southern states who were seated to the exclusion of the Southern delegates from the previous session of the convention, nominate Douglas for President.
- June 28: Southern Democrats nominate Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for President. Their platform endorses a national slave code.
- Honduran militia stop another filibuster effort by William Walker. They capture and execute him before a firing squad on September 12, 1860.
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